The autocratic leader of Russia is a family murderer. If the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice, then his own grandchildren will one day spit on his grave and change their last names in disgust.
Don’t call him a “strongman”. Like all bullies, he is utterly weak. He isn’t fighting other people - rather he is fighting the pathetic, paralyzing, life-sucking weakness that grips his gasping heart with an iron fist. So to prove himself, he kills children. He takes, he takes, he takes, because he has everything and yet it is NOTHING. Other people are simply collateral damage in his sociopathic rage against his own loneliness, isolation, and emptiness.
If there is an afterlife, should we wish him eternal damnation? No. There is no revenge without rehabilitation. Like all murderers, he should have to live every single life that he has taken. He should experience the vibrant, unique culture of each individual, each family, each circle of friends. And he should experience its violent end by the hand of cold disregard. He should spend thousands of years living through joys, sorrows, and abrupt endings, over and over and over for eons, until he sees his life and legacy with unflinching objectivity.
Then finally, at one moment, all the lives would be lived, and he would see, not only the consequences of the current repugnant, spineless slime inside of him, but he would also see the beauty of life and of love. And that utter lack of esteem, for himself and for others, would transform and grow into a beautiful garden of experiences - planting flowers, cooking a meal with family, sharing stories with true friends, delighting in the joyful laugh of a toddler, caring for someone who needs it, feeling loved….and he would become truly good - not through the force of violence, but through the force of awareness.
But until then, if it ever happens, the world must deal with a sociopathic, existential threat to all we value.
